To win converts to evolution is not my only object in discussing the subject. What is quite as important (and, frankly, to me as enjoyable) is to make use of the opportunities the discussion affords me of giving a sort of fifth-rib dig o’ the thumb to those complacent ones who (judging by the manner they acquired, and still retain, their beliefs) seem to think that the mere accident of one’s birth and parentage in a certain time and place, thus bringing him in contact with certain prevailing opinions, is proof that those opinions are true. This writer is speaking largely from his own mental experience. He, like his opponent, absorbed orthodox theology along with political standpattism and a few other “safe and sane” _isms_ from his early environment. My opponent, like most others, never thought of questioning the truth of those beliefs, but left them undisturbed until they fossilized. On the other hand some of us, perhaps because of a radical twist in our mental make-up, set ourselves to examining those hand-me-down beliefs and found some of them lacking in some important essentials. Having changed sides on one or more important questions we naturally lost faith in the more-or-less popular theory that because an idea is old, or is held by a majority of the people, it must therefore necessarily be true. That is the extent of this writer’s “sponginess.” As a rule when we have learned that we have absorbed most of our political, religious and other early opinions from our environment through the pores of our skin we become less cock-sure we have a monopoly on truth. As a rule latitude and longitude instead of reason shapes our opinions on the most important issues. We are generally Protestants, Catholics, Mohammedans, Confucians, Monarchists, democrats or republicans, according to whether we happened to be born and reared in Spain, Turkey, China, Mississippi or Vermont. An old English Philosopher says: “Men have always thought and believed in masses. Throughout the whole earth you may observe opinions and ideas, like swarms of bees, clustering together upon particular spots, or as if, like certain trees and plants, they were indigenous to the soil.” Another writer says, “Men think in packs as jackals hunt.” A young minister exclaims: “There is a gulf between man and the inferior animals which no amount of sophistry, alias science, can ever bridge. There is more than a missing link--a thousand links. Man differs from animals in mental faculties. Lower animals cannot originate an idea.... If man was evolved from a beast, where did he get his soul? You cannot say it evolved, too. There was a definite hour when man, possessing an immortal spirit, walked this earth, or else man is yet a beast.